Y Combinator Startup Podcast
00:20:32 · S3, Paul Copplestone, Harj Taggar
[00:20:32] S3: We actually like such a contrarian idea at the time, actually. [00:20:35] S0: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Think, like, we saw how hard it was to use a database even for developers. And so that dashboard first was like, oh, let's build a UI that looks like Airtable on top of Postgres because I actually loved Airtable as well. I was like, wouldn't it be cool if that was just a Postgres database on the back end? So that one was just seeing that even software engineers struggled. And then like when we moved to AI, I think we talked about this on the other podcast. The AI API shift was because we had someone integrating with us and they were like, oh, we want to launch lots of databases. We need an API to do all of this. And that was, like, 2021 maybe. And it turns out that was exactly the right move for 2024 when the likes of Bolt and Lovable and all of these people started building on top of us. Then this year, I just saw that, actually, no one's coming to the dashboard. Like, no one no one visits dashboards anymore. So how are agents gonna build? In this one, I just kinda put out a product memo to the team that said it has to be code first, get native. Supabase just has to shift to to code first. So if it exists on the dashboard, it basically has to work in lockstep in code, infrastructure as code, essentially. And we rearchitected a lot of the CLI and everything to work in sandboxes in code. [00:22:03] S2: Well, you guys maybe too far back, but were you inspired by Parse, another way to see a company?
00:22:03 · Harj Taggar, Paul Copplestone
[00:22:03] S2: Well, you guys maybe too far back, but were you inspired by Parse, another way to see a company? [00:22:07] S0: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Parse and Firebase, I I liked both of those companies. And it's funny these waves, right, because they did the back end and Firebase acquired by Google and Parse by Meta. But in some ways, I think they, like, blazed the trail for us to come along and actually have a legitimate database business. Because in 2014, it would have been ridiculous not to use RDS for your for your database. Then they came along. Mongo came along. Mongo started moving to Atlas, and a lot of these database companies kind of showed that you don't need to just use one of the three hyperscalers. You can actually have a legitimate database company. And so that that timing was crucial for us. [00:22:55] S2: Yeah. Past sort of forgotten that. But it was like actually a really well built product. They launched, like, just when I was building iPhone apps for the first time, and it was, like, quite nice to switch to, like, a nice restful API that I trying to deal with. [00:23:07] S0: These shifts always happen with, like, inflection points. Right? So at that point, there were two things that happened in the market. Somehow MongoDB convinced everyone that NoSQL was supposed to be like an amazing way to store your data. And the second was mobile. And so, you know, we're fortunate that we had a couple of these waves as well. And now we're right in the thick of it.
00:23:07 · Paul Copplestone, Harj Taggar
[00:23:07] S0: These shifts always happen with, like, inflection points. Right? So at that point, there were two things that happened in the market. Somehow MongoDB convinced everyone that NoSQL was supposed to be like an amazing way to store your data. And the second was mobile. And so, you know, we're fortunate that we had a couple of these waves as well. And now we're right in the thick of it. [00:23:32] S2: And Yeah. I mean, is what I was asking about sort of like how you think about the enterprise early because I think, I mean, if go even further back, this is sort of like Heroku was sort of the first where it's like, hey, like just start with like the best developer experience and then scale up. It is actually can be quite hard to like scale up with people. And I think like, you know, Heroku sort of, I don't think could quite bridge that gap to how do you keep people on you like as the apps get bigger and and need to be more performant etcetera etcetera. But like historically every company's had to figure that out. Mhmm. And I know you guys are looking that way but you might not have to. Like honestly, the the the market for just owning like, I know, call it zero to 10 whatever, like keeps expanding at this rate, it's gonna be huge.
00:23:32 · Harj Taggar, Paul Copplestone
[00:23:32] S2: And Yeah. I mean, is what I was asking about sort of like how you think about the enterprise early because I think, I mean, if go even further back, this is sort of like Heroku was sort of the first where it's like, hey, like just start with like the best developer experience and then scale up. It is actually can be quite hard to like scale up with people. And I think like, you know, Heroku sort of, I don't think could quite bridge that gap to how do you keep people on you like as the apps get bigger and and need to be more performant etcetera etcetera. But like historically every company's had to figure that out. Mhmm. And I know you guys are looking that way but you might not have to. Like honestly, the the the market for just owning like, I know, call it zero to 10 whatever, like keeps expanding at this rate, it's gonna be huge. [00:24:14] S0: Yeah. We want it all. Yeah. Yeah. So we might not have to, but we'll definitely do it. And, like, kudos to Heroku. I think they popularized Postgres. But at the time, Postgres was pretty... It was still pretty nascent and it still got some scaling limitations. And so, yeah, we've had to wrap Postgres and some tooling that will allow it to scale indefinitely. But... [00:24:41] S2: I mean, I guess a better analogy for you guys is more like AWS was able to actually like get people early and like [00:24:46] S0: And scale. [00:24:46] S2: Yeah. And so do do you... Like what are the lessons maybe? Like how how do you think about making sure you can scale infinitely? The
00:24:46 · Harj Taggar, Paul Copplestone
[00:24:46] S2: Yeah. And so do do you... Like what are the lessons maybe? Like how how do you think about making sure you can scale infinitely? The [00:24:53] S0: lesson, I think that they... I heard a stat and was telling me. I might get it wrong, so fact check me. But something like 40% of AWS's revenue comes from, like, startups that started on them and then scaled up. And, like, that's the category that we want. You know? Like, we know that to convince people to migrate to... From one database provider to another is near impossible. And so we just wanna be there on day one, make sure that they have a great time, and then make sure that they actually don't wanna leave. [00:25:24] S2: The same business model to Stripe. I mean, it's, like, basically the best business model on Earth if you can get it. But you get them on day one and then just scale with, like, the fastest growing companies in the world. [00:25:32] S0: Yeah. Definitely. And you just do that for a generation. Yeah. And you become a generational business. Yeah. That's pretty much it. Yeah. It's hard for us because what does day one look like? That's rapidly shaped Yeah. Changing. So in the past, day one for me was always like YC customers. And now day one is becoming like, okay. Everyone's a builder. What are they gonna use? What are the modalities? What... How are they gonna choose their databases? These are tricky questions.
00:25:32 · Paul Copplestone, Garry Tan, S3
[00:25:32] S0: Yeah. Definitely. And you just do that for a generation. Yeah. And you become a generational business. Yeah. That's pretty much it. Yeah. It's hard for us because what does day one look like? That's rapidly shaped Yeah. Changing. So in the past, day one for me was always like YC customers. And now day one is becoming like, okay. Everyone's a builder. What are they gonna use? What are the modalities? What... How are they gonna choose their databases? These are tricky questions. [00:25:59] S1: YC's next batch is now taking applications. Got a startup in you? Apply at ycombinator.com/apply. It's never too early, and filling out the app will level up your idea. Okay. Back to the video. [00:26:13] S3: It's kind of a different customer segment. Like like, initially, when you started, like, there was not an individual market for databases. Like, the idea of a database company being a direct to consumer [00:26:23] S0: Mhmm. [00:26:23] S3: Yeah. Business would have just, like, sounded like a Syntax error. Yes. But now you actually have two segments. You have the, like, early stage companies that that that has this powerful Stripe business model, but you're also, like, selling directly to consumers or to their agents perhaps. [00:26:38] S0: Yes. Yes. Yes. [00:26:39] S3: And those use cases presumably will not scale the way startups will, but they might just, like, continue to use you for, like, for the rest of their lives because you're powering the app that, like, runs their personal finance software or your taxi cab company or something like that.